Brideshead Revisited *** (2008, Ben Whishaw, Matthew Goode, Patrick Malahide, Hayley Atwell, Joseph Beattie, Felicity Jones, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon) – Classic Movie Review 2941

Director Julian Jarrold’s conscientious, sumptuous and costly ($20 million) remake for the cinema of Brideshead Revisited in 2008 of the much loved 1981 classic of British TV drama Brideshead Revisited is an effective adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel about England’s decadent and declining upper-class between the world wars.

It may not be wholly satisfying but it is entertaining and it does find the right stars in Ben Whishaw and Matthew Goode, both giving good, highly creditable performances.

Goode plays the innocent, sexually ambivalent Oxford University undergraduate Charles Ryder, who becomes very close friends with the gay and divinely decadent Sebastian Flyte (Whishaw) and gets entangled in the affairs of his upper class Catholic family, the grand but vulnerable Flytes.

The romance between Charles and Sebastian’s sister Julia Flyte (Hayley Atwell) gets proportionately more screen time in the screenplay by Andrew Davies and Jeremy Brock, which is much more conventional in every way than the Charles-Sebastian flirtation.

It was bold of them to remake the TV classic, inviting comparisons that are odorous to the film. The immense 11-episode running time of the TV original is greatly missed here at 133 minutes, along with its iconic actors, but the film is atmospheric, involving and attractively acted.

It sustains a brisk pace through a complicated tale stretching from the heady Roaring Twenties to the aftermath of World War Two. Also in the cast are Patrick Malahide as Mr Ryder, Felicity Jones as Cordelia Flyte, Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain, Michael Gambon as Lord Marchmain, Greta Scacchi as Cara, Ed Stoppard as Bridey Flyte and Joseph Beattie as the wicked Anthony Blanche.

Brideshead Revisited was filmed in the summer of 2007, apparently one of the rainiest summers on record in England. The crew was rained on at every location, even when they went off to film in Venice.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2941

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Ben Whishaw stars in Brideshead Revisited (2008).